Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Virtual reality-Treadmill combined Intervention for enhancing Mobility and reducing falls in the Elderly

Objective

Falls are a major public health concern that directly affects millions of elderly Europeans, the healthcare system, and the adult children and caregivers of older people. The V-TIME approach combines cutting edge technology with emerging concepts from gerontology, neuroscience and rehabilitation to reduce fall risk in a unique way. The V-TIME multi-modal intervention consists of treadmill training (TT) that promotes walking abilities and physical fitness. A key novel addition is the simultaneous use of a virtual reality (VR) environment that challenges, implicitly teaches and enhances cognitive skills that facilitate the safe execution of many activities of daily living: visual scanning, planning, dual tasking abilities, and obstacle negotiation.
Exciting pilot studies support the idea that TT augmented with VR (TT+VR) addresses the limitations of existing fall prevention interventions. Via TT+VR, V-TIME offers task-specific training in a motivating and safe environment that can readily be reproduced and standardized. The major goal of the current proposal is to establish the beneficial effects of V-TIME training in a large (n=300) and diverse group of elderly via a multi-centre, prospective randomized controlled trial. Outcomes include post-training 6 month fall incidence rates (the primary outcome), gait, physical activity (e.g. steps walked in 7 days), cognitive function, quality of life, and neuroimaging measures (fNIRS, fMRI). The effects of dosing and an extension phase will be examined (n=60). The consortium brings together world leaders in ageing, neuroscience, rehabilitation and VR technology to test a new therapy that may dramatically reduce the negative costs of falls, financial and other. The RCT is designed to show that V-TIME offers a significant and clinically relevant greater benefit compared to current clinical management; to probe brain plasticity; and to establish efficacy on fall risk, mobility, cognitive function, and functional independence.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-HEALTH-2011-two-stage
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research project

Coordinator

THE FOUNDATION FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND HEALTH SERVICES NEXT TO THE MEDICAL CENTER TEL AVIV
EU contribution
€ 1 043 090,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (8)

My booklet 0 0